My latest: Israelis on the occupiers who oppose “occupation”

HOSTAGE SQUARE, TEL AVIV –
They haven’t missed it. They’ve seen what’s happening on our campuses.

They’ve seen and read the news reports – reports showing over-privileged white Gen Z and Millennial types in keffiyahs, demanding if the visitors to their campus encampments, their “Little Gazas,” are Jews. They’ve seen the chanted tributes to Hamas and Iran and the horrors of October 7. They’ve seen all that.

And they’re disgusted. They’re shocked. They’re appalled. They’re absolutely baffled why young Canadians – and young Americans, and young Europeans – are openly expressing so much contempt towards the Jewish state.

In other circumstances, at other times, Israelis are used to seeing protests against them in Canada and the United States and Europe. Those protests have been happening, more or less continuously, since Israel was founded in 1948. They’re not new.

But the anti-Israel encampments at places of higher learning in North America – the pro-Hamas, pro-Iran, pro-terror encampments, in too many cases? That, they can’t believe. That is new.

At a table selling T-shirts and bracelets to raise funds for the families of the 128 October 7thhostages, Judy Goldman shakes her head. Goldman is a former Montrealer, and still has family in Toronto and the Vancouver area.

She’s present this day with a dark-haired friend, whose son, 23-year-old Yosef Haim Ohana, is still being held hostage by Hamas. Her friend doesn’t want to talk about politics, she says. But Judy does. She has a few things to get off her mind.

“I am shocked by what I have seen at these campuses,” she says. “Shocked. It is pure anti-Semitism.

“Anti-Semitism is always there. It bubbles underneath the surface. Any excuse can bring it out. But I’m very surprised to see what young Canadians, at universities in places like Toronto, are doing.” She shakes her head again.

She continues: “It’s shocking, because universities are supposed to be places where morality is taught. And what’s happening in those places is just outlandish. It shouldn’t be happening! At places like McGill, too, which I know well.”

It’s normal for young people to be preoccupied with issues like climate change or the future, says Judy. But to praise Hamas, who slaughtered 1,200 men, women, children and babies on October 7, 2023? “It is absolutely beyond words,” says Judy.

A few feet away, at a booth that has been set up for the hostages taken from the kibbutz Nahal Oz, Iris Shellhav Nahal is talking to whoever will listen. She’s wearing a T-shirt bearing the images of some of her neighbours who were killed or kidnapped on October 7.

“It’s terrible,” she says of the encampments and protests.  “What I have seen? It’s not good. Where did [the students] get these terrible ideas? They’re ignorant. They don’t know history – they don’t know what Hamas means to us!”

Iris softens a bit and leans back in her chair. “Some of the students, I’m sure they’re not bad people,” she says, pausing. “But how can they say we are so terrible when we are the ones who were attacked first? It’s just terrible.”

Next door, there is a booth to promote the memory of the victims of the Re’im Music Festival on the 7th. There’s an older man sitting there, but he doesn’t speak English. Two women who are present, Liora and Aziza – they speak a little English, but not so well, they say – won’t give their last names. “It makes me mad,” says Liora of the encampments. Says Aziza: “We know kids who were killed at the music festival. Why don’t these kids in Canada and America understand? They look like our kids.”

Asked why they think young people in Western universities have embraced the hateful rhetoric of Hamas and its ilk, all of  the women have theories about that, too. They speculate that there are many anti-Israel Muslims or Arabs at North American universities who have manipulated the protests they see in TV. They also wonder if the ones camped out have been brainwashed by their professors.

At the same booth where Judy Goldman volunteers, a lovely woman from Manchester is working. Her name is Sara Omer and she still has a thick Manchurian accent.

Sara explains she has three sons in the Israel Defence Force, one stationed this day in the South of Gaza. He’s been sleeping under the stars, she says, and he’s excited that some toilets and showers have finally been shipped in. She smiles when she talks about him.

Sara’s husband was killed in military action a few years back, and she works with the hostage families, she says, because she understands what it means to lose someone to the fight for Israel.

She doesn’t, however, understand how any North American young person can raise their voice in support of a racist, hateful death cult like Hamas.

“I read the New York Times every day, ” Sara says.  “I read over the weekend was that in Columbia University 60 per cent at the encampments are just outsiders. They’re not students. They’re outsiders and they’re coming and they’re firing up the others.

She goes on: “And some of the students who were interviewed –  they don’t even know what they’re protesting. They don’t understand.”

“It makes my blood boil.”

Two things to conclude with: everyone here – everyone this writer spoke to – is here because they want to be. Not only do they not work for the Netanyahu government – they’re furious with the Netanyahu government. They want the hostages home, now, and feel the Israeli Prime Minister has botched the job.

The other thing: everyone here is carefully watching what is happening in North America, at supposed places of higher education. They haven’t missed it.

And they don’t understand it. At all.